AWS Solutions Architect Associate 2017- ACloud Guru course

AWS Solutions Architect Associate

----- Interested Reads------
+ Interesting Read (Serverless Architecture of Acloud guru)
  https://read.acloud.guru/serverless-the-future-of-software-architecture-d4473ffed864
  
----- Getting Started-------
+ Requirements 
  + AWS Free Tier Account
  + PC with putty and putty keygen/ Mac
  + Optional
    + IoS/ Android App $20
    + Free Alexa Skill with 60 questions for each certification
    + Free course on how to code Alexa
    + Reddit AWS: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonWebServices/
    + Acloud guru youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/acloudguru
    
----- Exam Blueprint-------
  
----- Services------- (* important - overview)
+ AWS Global Infrastructure
+ Compute
  *+ EC2
  -+ ECS
  
+ Network & CDN
  + Route 53
  *+ VPC (peering)
  + Cloud Front
  + Direct Connect
  
+ Databases
  + RDS
  + DynamoDB
  + RedShift
  + Elasticcache
  + Aurora
  
+ Storage
  *+ S3
  *+ EBS- Elastic Block Store
  + Glacier
  + Storage Gateway
  
+ Security & Identity
  + IAM
  Inspector
  Certificate Manager
  Directory Service
  WAF & Shield
  Compliance Reports
  
+ Management tools
  CloudWatch
  CloudFormation
  CloudTrail
  Config
  OpsWorks
  Service Catalog
  Trusted Advisor
  Managed Services
  
+ Desktop & App Streaming
  WorkSpaces
  AppStream 2.0
  
+ Messaging
  Simple Queue Service
  Simple Notification Service
  SES

+ Kinesis
+ API Gateway
+ Trusted Advisor, Billing

-+ Opsowork
-+ Codecommit
-+ FIFO SQS
-+ STS
  
------To-Do--------
+ Went thru videos on acloud once

+ AWS Solutions Architect Official Study guide

+ FAQs of EC2, S3, SQS, VPC etc.

+ Architect, Security, S3, EC2, EBS whitepapers

+ Topic cheat sheets on http://jayendrapatil.com

+ Practice free labs on Qwiklabs/ Hands on AWS

+ Complete the mini test or final test on acloud. I recommend going thru the tests couple of days ahead of actual test.  

+ Go thru official sample questions from AWS

The minimum storage size for a SQL Server DB instance is 20 GB for the Express and Web Editions, and 200 GB for the Standard and Enterprise Editions.

The maximum storage size for a SQL Server DB instance is 4 TB for the Enterprise, Standard, and Web editions, and 300 GB for the Express edition.

I would recommend reading S3, Dynamo, CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk, VPC tutorial from AWS website. Overall I am glad I took dev course on Cloud Guru and completed certification in 3-4 weeks. I did work on AWS for about 6months - 1year last year.

most of the questions showed up from http://devcertguru.com/certifications/amazon/exam-questions/aws-cda-v1

100% the post above. Forget about the dev course (except for dynamodb section). Someone not into the matter would rather fail with it. SA course + all the points above, solid dynamodb knowledge (not just faq but dev / docs + dynamodb optimization questions, sns message format / publish api, aws.com sample questions etc and you are set.

Hello, all. I recently achieved certification as an AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate, and I wanted to share my approach with those who might be interested.

I did start with a solid technical background, but I believe the following were the key activities that helped me learn AWS:

1. Watching all the videos in all five ACloud.Guru certification courses. I felt that the CSA-A course was a great overview, but the other four courses really deepened my understanding and I do think there's value in going through all of them right off the bat.

2. Doing many QwikLabs (34 labs; 10 quests; 40 hours), with determination to squeeze every last drop of learning out of each one. Before I did them, a colleague of mine had pointed out that the labs don't end when the script does, so you can keep trying out all sorts of things in that environment until the "Access Time" expires. And to maximize this leftover time available to you, you can read through the lab script before you actually start the lab. I highly recommend buying a one-month unlimited access subscription for $55 and doing as many of the quests as you can, in this way. (For more info about my use of QwikLabs, see the "Extra notes about QwikLabs", below.)

3. Spending lots of time answering questions and reading about people's experiences, on the ACloud.Guru forums. I paid particular attention to services/features that other people had trouble with, and learned about those things by reading the relevant documentation.

4. Getting hands-on and building things in AWS, such as: I built VPCs with bastions, NATs, VPC endpoints, and local-traffic-only subnets; I migrated a Wordpress web site to AWS and used RDS and both internal and external Route53 hosted zones; etc. Doing this also included reading AWS documentation about the things I was trying to do.

The mindset I've had when learning about AWS has been to try to understand things, not just memorize them. In particular, I want to understand how services and features are implemented, under the hood, and what that means for limits and gotchas. I do still think it's valuable to memorize certain important details, though--especially thresholds at which we need to switch from naive mode ("AWS does all the magic for us") into careful mode ("Avoid tripping over the leaks in the abstraction"). Some examples of these include S3 request rates and DynamoDB partitions (though I'm not sure partitions are tested at the associate level). I like this quote: "Leaky abstractions are precisely why it's important to understand what's going on at least one level below where you're working at. This has always been true of computers, whether you're working at a script level, system language level, assembly, or even hardware. Eventually something will break the abstraction".

Here are my more-traditional exam tips:

Spot instances are good for cost optimization, even if it seems you might need to fall back to On-Demand instances if you wind up getting kicked off them and the timeline grows tighter. The primary (but still not only) factor seems to be whether you can gracefully handle instances that die on you--which is pretty much how you should always design everything, anyway!

The term "use case" is not the same as "function" or "capability". A use case is something that your app/system will need to accomplish, not just behaviour that you will get from that service. In particular, a use case doesn't require that the service be a 100% turnkey solution for that situation, just that the service plays a valuable role in enabling it.

There might be extra, unnecessary information in some of the questions (red herrings), so try not to get thrown off by them. Understand what services can and can't do, but don't ignore "obvious"-but-still-correct answers in favour of super-tricky ones.

If you don't know what they're trying to ask, in a question, just move on and come back to it later (by using the helpful "mark this question" feature in the exam tool). You could easily spend way more time than you should on a single confusing question if you don't triage and move on.

My exam questions required me to understand features and use cases of: VPC peering, cross-account access, DirectConnect, snapshotting EBS RAID arrays, DynamoDB, spot instances, Glacier, AWS/user security responsibilities, etc.

In the end, I was very pleased with my results:

Overall Score: 100%

Topic Level Scoring:

1.0 Designing highly available, cost efficient, fault tolerant, scalable systems : 100%

2.0 Implementation/Deployment: 100%

3.0 Security: 100%

4.0 Troubleshooting: 100%

At first I was a bit sceptical (I mean, I wasn't absolutely confident about every single answer), but an Amazon employee confirmed it: "We have reviewed your test scores and the scores are correct. Congratulations on scoring 100% across all topics and on the exam!"

Thank you to everyone who participates on these forums and to the ACloud.Guru team!

Extra notes about QwikLabs:

I'd like to clarify that none of what I described above should be considered necessary. I could have taken a different path to learning AWS and passing my exams, and you probably will. I only meant to share what I found particularly useful.

Also, while I did choose to do many QwikLabs, that should not be taken as a slight against the ACloud.Guru course labs. I got a lot of value out of watching the course labs; I just also got a lot of value out of going through dozens of diverse QwikLabs. As one example, the flexibility of EBS was really locked in for me when a QwikLab had me snapshot and create a second EBS volume to avoid re-downloading a large installer on a second EC2 instance. I binged on QwikLabs during their free promotion period, but I have since paid real money for them and would do so again--especially now that QwikLabs offers a monthly, all-you-can-use subscription.

For those who are interested in doing the same labs I did--or just knowing which they were--here is a link to my QwikLabs profile. From there, you can click on each badge to get to the associated quest and see which specific labs it includes. (Note that some of the badges look like duplicates but they are actually two different quests: an introductory one and an advanced one.) I have done a few more labs that haven't (yet) culminated in a badge, but the labs you can get to from my profile are the lion's share.

My path forward:

Since writing this post, I have also achieved additional certifications. I wrote up my experiences with those exams on these posts:

My Path to Developer Associate

My Path to SysOps Associate

My Path To DevOps Engineer Professional

My Path To Solutions Architect Professional

This Solutions Architect Associate certification was #1 on my path to 5/5.

I have also written a post answering many of the Frequently Asked Questions on these forums. I hope it might help you on your path.

100% is amazing, congratulations! After taking the exam, I honestly thought I would get 100%, but I ended up with 87%. To add to this post, this course was about 80% of my study material for the exam. I retook every quiz in every section until I got 100%. I also took a practice exam on thecertschool.com which turned out to be pretty valuable as some of those questions appeared word-for-word on the exam. Other than this course, I felt that the FAQs were the most useful study material. I would say 80% of my studying was done with this course. Here's what was covered in my exam:

1. VPC - there were a TON of questions about VPCs, subnets, NACLs, internet gateways, VPNs, etc.

2. EC2/EBS - lots of questions about EBS, snapshots, termination protection, spot instances

3. S3 - know the different storage classes, encryption, etc

4. IAM

5. SQS/SNS/DynamoDB - not as many questions on these as I expected. My exam referred to hash and range key instead of partition and sort key, which threw me for a loop until I remembered from the course what it was referring to.

6. Storage Gateway/Snowball

Overall, this was a great affordable course for what I learned and how well it prepared me for the exam. Now, I just have SysOps left for the trifecta!

Here are my 2 cents

1. Course is sufficient to get you thru (caveat: one has understood the concepts properly)

2. But if you really want to be close to 80+ score, you need to a lot of practical experience either thru job or thru hands-on with aws.

I felt that questions were quite tricky (especially with multiple answers) but if one has understood the concepts and have practiced atleast a end-2-end vpc setup, it should be achievable.

https://medium.com/@franktran/how-to-succeed-in-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-exam-8a30344347f#.jbgmq2dr5

Where are the AWS FAQs?

https://aws.amazon.com/faqs/

Where are the AWS Whitepapers?

https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/

Which one is is "the Security Whitepaper"?

That's a bit complicated because AWS keeps updating old and releasing more new security whitepapers. As of March, 2017, there were ten general "Security Whitepapers", plus more specific ones for things like HIPAA and governance. However, these are the two key security whitepapers:

AWS: Overview of Security Processes (March 2017; 91 pages)

AWS Security Best Practices (August 2016; 74 pages)

Where is AWS's official information about certifications?

https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certification-prep/

This page contains lots of important information for those considering or pursuing an AWS certification. For each certification, this page includes the Exam Guide (a.k.a. Exam Blueprint), sample questions, links to recommended QwikLabs, links to key whitepapers and FAQs, information on recertification, and more.

How do I schedule an AWS certification exam?

Go to https://www.aws.training/certification , click "Schedule an Exam", and follow link after link to make your way into the Webassessor system.

Going Through the Courses
Where are the course resources?

Each video has its own "Lesson Resources" section in the course/lesson navigation/overview pane to the left of the lesson video (while it's playing)--and now also on the Course Outline! Here's an example on the Course Outline: http://imgur.com/a/RYLsU . And here's an example on the video player: http://imgur.com/pkAnfPy . On small screens, the video-player resources view may be hidden behind the "Related Discussions" panel, so try making your browser window larger or having it zoom out. If the video mentions a resource and it's not listed there, ask ACloud.Guru support to add it. Please note both the specific video (ideally with a timecode) and the specific missing resource, when you contact support.

The course is too fast, so how do I slow it down? The course is too slow, so how do I speed it up?

There are speed controls that show up with the player controls when playing a video: these start as "1x" and change as you click that. Here's an example: http://i.imgur.com/0zXFLdB . Alternatively, if you want finer or wider control over the playback speed, then you can use a Chrome extension like Video Speed Controller. You could also download each video and control the playback in whatever video app you choose, but that's rather more hassle. That said, you should consider downloading and fast-replaying the exam tips videos on your phone or tablet just before your exam.

How do I download the course videos?

When you're watching a video, there's a little "Cloud" icon in the bottom right corner of the video player. Here's an example: http://imgur.com/hq4Ppv5 . Pressing this button should download the video.

If I've already bought a course on Udemy, how do I attach that purchase to my ACloud.Guru account?

When you're logged in to the site, your name will show up in the top right corner. Pressing this drops down a menu that includes "Migrate". Here's an example: http://imgur.com/a/ZSzkl Pressing that starts a wizard to link up your purchase(s). If you have any trouble with this, email support@acloud.guru .

Why are the section quizzes so easy and the final practice exam so hard?

They target different things: the module quizzes are more for reinforcing and checking that you remember that module's concepts--which is good to help with learning but is not representative of the AWS exams. If you're trying to determine whether you're ready for the real test, the Final Practice Exam on ACloud.Guru--which is better at targeting your understanding of the concepts--is rather closer to the real test. See this answer to read more of my opinion on this.

Why does the Final Practice Exam include some topics that were not mentioned in the course?

AWS is a large ecosystem and the AWS certification exams are not constrained to small sections of it. The certification courses cover all of the major areas tested by the exams, but there are too many details to cover every single one of them. Some people believe that blasting through the certification course videos will be enough to go from AWS newbie to AWS master, but that is not really the case. It is possible that only watching the course videos through once might be enough for you to pass the exam, but the ACloud.Guru team recommends, "If you’re new to AWS, but have some IT experience typically between 40 to 80 total hours of study is required. Our Associate Courses are between 7 to 11 hours long, and require 4 to 8 hours of study for every 1 hour of video." AWS states that candidates should have at least one full year of professional real-world experience with AWS before taking the Associate level exams, and two years for the Professional level exams, but this is not enforced. Still, many people who pass the exam laud the value of getting hands-on experience with AWS--whether through something like QwikLabs or by going through the course labs and exploring on their own using the free tier.

Why do the ACloud.Guru quizzes/exams not tell me how many responses are expected?

Actually, they do, now! :-)

That was overlooked when they originally implemented the multi-response functionality, but they have since fixed it so that you are clearly told how many answers are expected and then required to select exactly that many responses.

Is the course up-to-date? Why is the Lambda video so old? Why is there no lesson on NAT Gateway? Why does the console shown in the video look different from mine? Why does the WordPress lab use S3 instead of EFS? When does AWS update their exams?

First of all, let me point out that since writing the above questions, the course has been updated with new lectures on Lambda, NAT Gateways, EFS, Bastions, API Gateway, and many other things. As for why some videos sometimes seem out of date, though, I think there are three key factors at play, here:

1. The certification exams lag far behind the bleeding/leading edge of AWS services. For example, until the Extended exam from early 2017, there were repeatedly reports from students that Lambda was not even mentioned on their exam, and I only remembered seeing one report that an exam question even asked about its definition--despite Lambda having been in full production for almost two years. Since the certification courses are targeting the AWS certifications (not "All the things!"), newer features are often mentioned but given lower priority until students report back that those new topics appeared on their exams. This keeps the courses more focused. In my post-exam posts, I wrote more about the out-of-date questions that appeared on my exams. Also, jghaines has researched the dates when the exams were released, noting, "As best I can tell, they have not received significant updates since their release."

2. AWS makes dozens of changes, every week, and it takes a lot of time to rerecord videos every time AWS updates or adds something--so some older videos may remain in the course until their content needs to be updated. That said, I know that the courses do get updated--especially based on post-exam feedback from students. For example, the three Associate courses received significant updates and additions to their VPC lessons (including Bastions), the OpsWorks lectures were completely remade, the Lambda lesson was redone, many lessons were added for new AWS features, etc. And of course they are also being updated to include the wealth of new topics from the Extended exam and any other gaps that are found.

3. It is important to understand the foundational services even when AWS brings out new service offerings that seem to supplant them. A perfect example of this is NAT functionality accomplished via an EC2 instance instead of checking the "magical" NAT Gateway checkbox on your VPC. You really need to understand how NAT instances work, for the exams--not only because the exams will present situations that include them, but also because they will illuminate important aspects of how AWS networking (i.e. VPC) works. There will also be important tradeoffs to consider: for example, a t2.nano NAT instance is rather cheaper to run than the NAT Gateway service and may therefore be a better choice for some light, non-critical workloads.

Getting Certified
In what order should I do the certifications?

Not everyone agrees, and it may depend on your background, but many people seem to suggest the following order: 1) Solutions Architect Associate, 2) Developer Associate, 3) SysOps Administrator Associate, 4) DevOps Professional, 5) Solutions Architect Professional. See also this answer.

What do I need to memorize for the exam?

Try to understand things, not memorize them, but the list of topics/areas that will be tested in a particular exam is listed in that exam's blueprint (a.k.a. "exam guide"), which can be found under https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certification-prep/ . As for specific items, review forum posts that others have written after taking their exams:

Solutions Architect Associate: exam, exam-tips, exam-tips-student-feedback

Developer Associate: exam

SysOps Administrator Associate: exam

DevOps Engineer Professional: exam (search)

Solutions Architect Professional: exam

For each of these forum topics, I recommend reading all the highest-voted posts ("Popular") and all the recent posts ("Recent"). While you're going through them, don't forget to upvote posts that you find helpful--especially the recent ones--so that others will have an easier time finding or noticing them.

How should I prepare for my certification exam?

Your path will be different from mine and everyone else's, but here are some helpful resources:

I wrote about my experiences in the posts linked from My Path to 5/5. If you're starting out, you can read about what I did at the associate level in My Path to Solutions Architect Associate, and for the Professional level certifications, you can read what I wrote in My Path to Solutions Architect Professional.

The ACloud.Guru team has written a blog post describing, "What you need to get AWS certified!"

Rusty wrote a great response to a forum question asking, "How to take the course".

In his "Exam Tips/Strategy" section, djohns061578 described an excellent technique to leverage the ACloud.Guru courses' final practice exams to really learn the material.

The post-exam forum posts mentioned above also contain a lot of good suggestions.

Official Practice Exams
How do I take the official AWS practice exam?

You buy a token for it in the same way as you schedule your real exams: By going to https://www.aws.training/certification , clicking "Schedule an Exam", and following link after link to make your way into the Webassessor system. In there, you can buy a token which will be active on your account until you decide to start the practice exam. The time limit only starts counting down when you begin the practice exam, not when you buy the token.

Note that you may have access to free practice exam codes on the "Benefits" screen in the AWS certification portal.

Can I retake the official AWS practice exams for free?

No. And the questions will be the same every time you (or anyone else) takes that practice exam.

Are the official AWS practice exams worth the money?

I personally think they can be a useful personal assessment and studying tool. Note that I do not recommend sharing the practice exam questions with others; rather, try to frame any forum questions you have around the parts of the questions and responses that you don't fully understand.

Official Certification Exams
What should I know before I schedule an AWS certification exam?

Read the AWS Certification FAQs found at https://aws.amazon.com/certification/faqs/ .

How do I schedule an AWS certification exam?

Go to https://www.aws.training/certification , click "Schedule an Exam", and follow link after link to make your way into the Webassessor system.

If I fail the exam, can I retake it? Will retaking it cost me more money?

Here is AWS's retake policy, from their certification FAQs:

"In the event that you fail to pass an AWS certification exam, you may retake the exam subject to the following conditions:

a. You must wait 14 days from the day you fail to take the exam again.

...

f. Candidates must pay the exam price each time they attempt the exam."

AWS used to restrict candidates to three attempts at each certification exam in a calendar year, but they dropped this requirement in May of 2017.

Note that if you took a $150 Specialty exam while it was in Beta, and it turns out that you failed it, you will be given a free token to retry the $300 Specialty exam when it is released.

How many questions will there be on my Associate-Level exam?

The exact number may depend on how lucky you are, but there are generally between 55 and 60 questions on each Associate-level exam. The Extended exam (available only early in 2017) had 80 questions.

How many questions will there be on my Professional-Level exam?

The exact number may depend on how lucky you are, but there are generally between 75 and 80 very long scenario questions on each Professional-level exam. You may get a few non-scenario questions, but don't count on it.

In an AWS exam, can I mark questions for review? Can I see and change my answers before I submit them?

Yes. There's a checkbox at the bottom of each question, and each question you mark in this way will show up with a "*" on your response overview page. The response overview page has a grid listing all the question numbers and the response(s) you chose for each question. Pressing on a question number takes you directly back to that question.

Will the official exam tell me how many responses are needed for each question?

Yes. Also, see "Why do the ACloud.Guru quizzes not tell me how many responses are expected?" question elsewhere in this FAQ.

Where can I get the actual questions from the official AWS exams?

There are some legitimate question pools out there that non-AWS people have put together (such as the ones on ACloud.Guru!), but don't cheat yourself, your employer, or AWS by looking for, using, or contributing to any question dumps from the real exams. Sharing/communicating questions from your exam constitutes a breach of the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) you entered into with AWS before taking the exam and may result in a revocation of any certification(s) you achieve. Furthermore, passing a certification exam because of such techniques is dishonest and arguably reckless--akin to bribing a driving examiner for a driver's license without actually knowing how to drive. Instead, avail yourself of the ethical resources at your disposal: the free practice questions on the AWS site, the paid official practice tests, the ACloud.Guru course exams, and forum discussions that help you better-understand the AWS technologies.

How can I get better at answering AWS exam questions?

How well you do on the exams correlates strongly with how well you understand the AWS services--memorizing questions and answers is not a good idea--but here are some useful resources to help you close the gap between your understanding and your exam scores:

Rusty has written an excellent post on how to approach AWS exam questions in a way that will turn what you've learned about AWS into correct answers.

Brian Schuster has also written his tips for an effective exam mindset and using the process of elimination.

Using the Forums
How can I search the forums?

You could either use the built-in search box or use Google and add "site:acloud.guru" as a search term. For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aacloud.guru+course+resources

Why did nobody answer my question?

There are a lot of possible reasons, but here are some tips to improve your forum posts:

Use the subject/question line to communicate information. A subject line like "Question" offers virtually no value to someone considering whether to click on it and read what you wrote. A much better subject line would be something like: "What is the purpose of the Source/Destination check?"

Know your audience. The forums are primarily for students like yourself to further your learning by interacting with other students. Of course there are instructors and moderators around, too, but they can't answer every question themselves. So try to aim your questions at students who might offer you some insight.

Start the conversation. Don't just paste in a sample question you found on the internet and expect everyone to spend their time answering it for you. Give others something to respond to by listing the things you believe are true about the situation and asking specific questions about the things you find confusing or uncertain.

Answer other people's questions. When you read someone else's question, can you answer it? And I don't just mean that you can you choose "C"--as if the person asking the question has the answer key. If you understand the topic well enough to teach it to someone else, then you can feel good about what you've learned. Prove to yourself that you have this level of learning by explaining the reasoning behind your answers--ideally with supporting references (links) to AWS documentation. Then reread your own answers and look for holes in your logic. Use other people's questions as your own little challenges to explore parts of AWS that you didn't know you didn't know. :)

Search the forums to see if your question has already been asked. If it has, either start the old conversation back up or at least refer to the previous discussion in your post and ask something new about it. If you were wondering about something, there's a good chance that someone before you was wondering about the same thing.

How do I contact Ryan or the other ACloud.Guru people?

They might see your forum post, but that's hit and miss. Instead, try emailing them at support@acloud.guru .

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